They Look at WHAT?

Driving away from a community activity, I had this conversation with my 14 year old son:
Son:"I just saw ___ and ___. Yeah, they look at Pornography."
Me (trying to stifle the real emotion):"WHAT?"
Son: "Yeah, there is a girl who texts them pictures. But mostly they just look at girls in their bikini's on their phones, that's not porn."
Me: "Uh, yes, it is porn."
Son: "So, I can't go to the beach or swimming pool and look at girls in their bikini's?"
Me:"Yes, you can still go to the beach, but if you are looking at girls who are hardly wearing anything and getting some kind of satisfaction out of it, then there is a problem."

My son and I have an open relationship, we have had many talks about life's topics. But I had just brought this issue up with my kids a week prior and did a role play with them. I wanted to know what they will or would do if a naughty image came up on the computer, while they were sitting in the computer lab at school. We had discussed it for a little bit and I felt better as a parent that they did have some ideas on what to do.

Pornography is a PROBLEM. Some would not consider what we see everyday in magazines, movies, FB, and other social networks porn. I am ready to shut down my pinterest account because of the body images that are popping up and also I received an email from pin and didn't know who it was from. I was a little naive and opened it because I thought I could trust it from pinterest. Well I was shocked at the 'porn' I saw.
I call it (or have heard it called) 'soft porn'. This soft porn that is making its way into our homes and minds is a slow ascend to the hard core porn. Over the past few weeks I have heard of different instances of people being addicted to Porn. One instance started with an image through a text in middle school. How the others started I am not sure, but the end result is the same. Despair and anger for the loved ones. Those who look at these images and have the addiction really do not think they have a problem. I don't claim to be an expert on this topic, so I am linking you to this article The Battle Against Pornography. It is from the LDS Living site. Also, there is another site on what you can do and how to recognize the signs of addictions. It is here.

We can not delay in talking to our children about these topics. If you look at the statistics, Porn sites are more popular then Google and yahoo. To put it into perspective, every time you use Google someone else is already logged onto a porn site. Here is a link to a family home evening site that has it all outlined for you. Once you click the link, click FHE Lessons and then scroll down to pornography, and it gives two lessons, each that are age appropriate for your kids.